Beyond the Affectations of Philosophy

Abstract

When conversation provokes the look that says, “We do not talk about that,” one is well advised to remember that indirection succeeds better than frontal assaults. On the other hand, if one lacks the stomach for deceit in such situations, it is simply a matter of good taste to rehearse the customary denunciations and regrets, referencing either the regrettable aspects of human nature, the inhuman nature of the perpetrators, and/or the incomprehensibility of such matters. Insistence on pushing past these customary exculpatory fabulations will be met by the “we don’t talk about that” of all socially approved discourse. One learns, later more often than sooner, that decorum has its own insistence—leave sleeping dogs lie. How then to handle the knowledge that sleeping dogs and their medicated masters have quite a bit to do with the erosion of public discourse? Is it possible that high society, high culture, and higher education are all major players in the “end” of democracy?

Reflection, which in a healthy person breaks the power of immediacy, is never as compelling as the illusion which it dispels. As a negative, considered movement which is not directed in a straight line, it lacks the brutality inherent in positive movement.¹

Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno,

Dialectic of Englightenment

“Have a nice day.”